Lately both Excitel and Hathway are providing Fiber braodband in most of the Delhi. While Hathway uses docsis in some of the old areas, Excitel too uses ethernet wire in some old LCO.
Hathway support is co owned while Excitel last mile is managed by franchisee/LCO who handle all the wiring and complaints.
Hathway uses Jio bandwidth while Excitel majorly uses Tata’s bandwidth.
Hathway Broadband and Excitel broadband are two competitors giving tough fight to each other. Hathway is offering 50mbps plans in Delhi using docsis 3.0 tech on co-axial cables while excitel is using old ethernet based cable as last mile (operated by LCO) to provide broadband service.
In Delhi an interesting situation has arrived in market of wired broadband. Like two fixed line providers we have(Mtnl vs Airtel) not found anywhere is world. We now have two cable broadband provider in most areas of Delhi.
Excitel is available in all the areas of Delhi wherever Hathway is available. This happened due to interesting situation. Hathway could have never thought that infrastructure upgrade would backstab them with an additional competitor. In most areas, Hathway was previously using same ethernet based last mile infrastructure that currently excitel is using.
However a year back Hathway started upgrading it’s infrastructure to Docsis 3.0 using newly laid co-axial cables. Local cable operators were asked to dismantle their ethernet based networks. Everything after upgrade is managed by Hathway itself as Docsis equipment is very costly. And with all the investment made by Hathway itself it can’t leave it to LCO for maintenance. Also handling Docsis equipment requires proper training. So the role of LCO was cut, from now on they would just get commission for no of users hopped on to hHathway broadband in their respective areas.
This is where excitel came in and offered to use same old ethernet infrastructure for it’s own broadband service with better commission and attractive plans. Excitel also didn’t have any problem with Hathway operating in same area.
Now LCO didn’t mind as whatever connection subscriber opt for, they would get commission either way. And they don’t have to shun staff who would take care of their cable tv n excitel broadband last mile at same time.
So thanks to this upgrade we are getting better competition and plans in Delhi market finally. Later Excitel upgraded all this ethernet cables to
Hathway is providing fiber in some areas & in old places Docsis which is Cisco technology proven for it’s stability. Infact an upgrade to Docsis 3.1 from current 3.0 can provide upto 1Gbps speed capability to end user with a simple router upgrade. However this platform is costly in comparison to fiber based network used by excitel. Which means Hathway too is using fiber in new areas. Still with more stability of Docsis and better complaint handling as everything is handled in own house, Hathway can command a premium. Advantage of Hathway is everything is handled by co itself even the support. Hathway backend bandwidth provider is jio as it is majorly owned by Jio.
Excitel biggest advantage is low overhead cost as last mile is managed by LCO. Their true unlimited plans with speed of 200mbps in mere Rs.599+tax per month are too good to resist. However stability and complaint mechanism do pose a problem as last mile is handled by local franshise sometime the cable tv operator of your area. LCO being the unprofessional part needs lot of training, though things are improving. Still its good for users needing broadband for mostly leisure purposes or can manage downtime every now then. Excitel uses Tata’s bandwidth at backend.